Project aims to help former professional athletes and their families maintain quality of life in aging

“The athletes wanted a more positive approach in the study. They don’t just want to be guinea pigs. ”

Barry S. Willer, PhD, professor of psychiatry

University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Early onset of dementia and the potential
for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in former professional
athletes, including former members of the Buffalo Bills and the
Buffalo Sabres, is the focus of a new University at Buffalo
research and treatment study called the Healthy Aging Mind
Project.

Funded in large part by the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation Team
Physician Fund, the study is based in UB’s Concussion
Management Clinic, which is a joint effort between the Department
of Orthopaedics and the Department of Psychiatry in the UB School
of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The UB study involves comprehensive physical and mental health
assessments of participants. The assessments include brain imaging
analysis through advanced magnetic resonance imaging, as well as
lifestyle issues, including nutrition, exercise and sleep patterns;
behavior, including mental health and addictive behaviors;
cognition, including memory and executive function; and physical
health.

An important impetus for the study was the seminal finding by
Boston University (BU) researchers of CTE in autopsies of former
players, according to Barry S. Willer, PhD, UB professor of
psychiatry, who is the study’s co-investigator with John
Leddy, MD, UB associate professor of orthopaedics.

Boston University faculty have agreed to share with the UB
investigators their research protocols, including those that will
be used in the UB brain imaging studies.

“The Boston researchers are sharing their imaging protocol
with us because they want to be able to compare findings over the
long run,” Willer explains. “No one expects the
diagnosis of CTE to be simple and 100 percent conclusive. We all
know it will involve degrees of difference between normal and
abnormal.

“We are now proceeding down the same path as the BU
researchers,” Willer continues, “namely, to identify
CTE through imaging, with the goal of identifying early onset
dementia while former players are still alive.”

In addition to conducting research on brain function in aging
athletes, the UB project has a strong service component designed to
provide education, assistance and, where possible, treatment for
these athletes.

Willer notes that the National Institutes of Health-funded study
at BU has precise restrictions on the former NFL players who can
enroll, since those who played certain positions are believed to be
at higher risk for CTE.

The UB study, however, is open to any former professional
athlete from any team who played a contact sport, such as football,
hockey or even rugby.

“The larger and more diverse the sample is, the
better,” says Willer. “Our study may be unique in the
U.S. in that it is including not just former football players but
former National Hockey League players as well, who also were
subjected to repeated concussions and therefore are at risk for
CTE.”

A key factor in the design of the UB study is the active
participation of former players themselves.

“The athletes wanted a more positive approach in the
study,” says Willer. “They don’t just want to be
guinea pigs. They want us to help them understand what could happen
to them as a result of their participation in professional sports
and what kind of help we could provide.”

As a result, the UB researchers have expanded on the BU protocol
by adding more extensive investigation into lifestyle choices that
may impinge on healthy aging. The UB researchers also have
developed educational resources and referrals for interventions to
assist participants and their families in maintaining healthy
choices and dealing with any diagnoses that are established as a
result of the extensive physical and mental health exams.

To accomplish this, Willer and Leddy took a year to plan their
study, creating intensive and highly productive collaborations with
faculty throughout UB.

So far, the researchers have completed assessments on about a
dozen former players. They hope to recruit more athletes as well as
an equal number of healthy controls for a total of 60
participants.

They will begin analyzing the brain scans only after all imaging
has been completed.

Co-investigators with Willer and Leddy include Gary Giovino,
PhD, professor and chair. UB Department of Community Health and
Health Behaviors in the School of Public Health and Health
Professions; Carla Jungquist, PhD, assistant professor in the
School of Nursing; Daniel Antonius, PhD, assistant professor of
psychiatry; John Baker, PhD, research associate professor and David
Wack, PhD, research assistant professor, both in the Department of
Nuclear Medicine and Robert Zivadinov, MD, PhD, professor of
neurology and director of the Buffalo Neuroimaging Analysis
Center.

Additional funding for the study comes from the NFL Charities,
the Robert Rich Family Foundation, the Buffalo Sabres Foundation
and the Program for Understanding Childhood Concussions and Stroke
(PUCCS), which was founded by Elad Levy, MD, chair of the UB
Department of Neurosurgery.